


from time to time we masque

by lucrezias-sparklyhairnet (shedseventears)



Category: The Borgias
Genre: F/F, F/M, Sibling Incest, ladies being fierce, plz as if you care about the incest if you watch this show, vaguely implied threesomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 14:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shedseventears/pseuds/lucrezias-sparklyhairnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The three of them are more suited than they thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	from time to time we masque

**Author's Note:**

> Almost a year ago, I wrote Charlotte d'Albret-centered story. She'd yet to be introduced so she was a lot angstier. I'm still super proud of that story, and it's probably my favorite of anything I've posted here, but I decided to add on a story about the Charlotte we met in "The Wolf and the Lamb". Because she is so delightful. This was meant to be less darker than "A Certain Perception", and it still is. But nevertheless, I can't help but make my Borgias plenty shadowed. I hope you enjoy!

Her French gowns do not suit Rome.

                Nor does her hair, looped and covered with its ornate headdresses.  Her bosom is covered, her sleeves long and slim, everything about her sleek and refined in comparison to the bawdy Italian women.  All their jewels, their tresses peeking through sheer hairnets, their painted mouths asking for more.

                Not that she minds them, truly.  She was not so favored in France, hated by the queen and passed off to a man who suited her needs but provoked scorn from her fellow ladies.  (Scorn, and, of course, wide and hungry eyes.) 

                “You must make me an Italian duchess,” she tells the ambassador, her finger on his protesting lips.  “For I am Italian, am I not?  With my husband?”

                His eyes flash; and he is so unnerved in this foreign place, so intimidated by their riches and perfumes.  “Your husband is Spanish, my lady.”

                “My husband is everything.”

                And he has become so.  A Spanish son of the pope of Rome, dragging a French title and a French wife on his heels, ruling the Romagna now that Caterina Sforza has fallen.  His hands bear Italian blood, too.  Her ladies gossiped long before she heard of the little prince’s death.

                She feigned shock and disapproval, for she is after all a royal.  But, with her husband’s face in mind, his wants and needs—an heir, a title, a dowry, the world—she thinks that perhaps murder may be justified. 

                Charlotte d’Albret has provided her husband with that title and that dowry; yet the heir still waits.  She bites her lip, looks over at the babe in her wet nurse’s arms.  Louise.  A girl child and the very image of her father—but a girl nonetheless. 

                When Il Valentino’s response to the announcement arrived—curt, grateful, promising nothing—when the ambassador whispered in her ear of rumors that he may choose his bastard nephew over a legitimate daughter…  Well, she had no choice but to visit him and all his glory?

                “He need not know,” she told her ambassador, her ladies.  “I should love to surprise my lord.”

                Rome.  The place she never wished to set foot in.  Her entourage is small, her carriage undecorated.  Better that her handsome husband cannot plot.  Better that she can charm him as she did when they first met.  He may not love her.  But oh, he likes her—he likes the little girl she was before her belly swelled, when she smiled rather than fretting.

                She shall not beg.  She will persuade.

                There is a masquerade tonight, a swirl of revelry and laughter and dancing whores.  Charlotte cares not if Valentino has taken one for his mistress.  He has given her what he wanted, this beautiful child.  Her independence, for no one would dare touch Valentino’s wife. 

                Tonight Charlotte stands Italian.  Never has she bared so much flesh; the tops of her breasts, the nape of her neck.  Yet her face remains covered; and so she shall be Juno tonight.  For surely her husband is Jupiter, king of the gods.

                Coins are exchanged; lips are sealed shut.  And no one mentions the Duchess of Valentinois sneaking her way into the great hall.  She is but another Roman lady, lest she opens her mouth and reveals that French tongue.  They spin about in their dances, these angels and devils.  And they are not those of the French court, stately and gentle, hiding flirtations behind feathered fans.

                The Italians see no need to hide.  She knows now why her husband shocked so many by pulling her close that first dance; it is no trouble here.  Men laying their hands upon women’s breasts, ladies flicking their tongues against their lords’ ears, all but drawing blood with nipping teeth.

                Alfonso of Aragon has been dead a few months at most.  Yet they wear no mourning.

                Her father-in-law, haggard-looking in his great throne, nonetheless claps his hands along with the tune.  On either side sits his women.  The older, refined creature that bore him his children takes his left; the younger, elegant lady on his right.  They seem to support his old bones, fighting to keep him entertained and vital.  Another masque, keeping this man’s reputation in full.       

                A man grabs at Charlotte’s hand, kisses it profusely.  And she snatches it away, fights to keep back a reprimand.  Her giggle, usually so natural a gesture, is forced.  She is a lonely stranger in the Vatican,lost in a sea of twisting bodies.

                Then there is a mass of clapping, cheering that sounds somewhat strained, just a bit forced, so greatly awed.  And all stand about the line of dancers, Charlotte pushing forward to see, thirsty, despite herself, for spectacle.

                She recognizes him by the black alone.

                But he is not Zeus; he does not take that kingly place.  He would rather war as Mars, the mask angry, covering thin white battle scars.  Yet he does not limp, does not show any wear as he cuts past lady after lady, making his way to that chosen partner.

                In France, her gown would be unseemly.  Breasts spilling, lined with pearls; her hair loose, held back only by a few pins.  Her crucifix seems to laugh, makes her the Vatican madonna as she wears Venus’s face.  Lucrezia Borgia, the widowed duchess, is blood red.

                When the other men take their ladies’ hands, bring them close yet not enough to touch, Cesare tugs at his sister’s cross, crashes her against him in a dance all their own.  She laughs, and there is a harsh, raw sound to it, like the tang of torn flesh.  Her hands slide against his chest, where their emblem would lie if he wore armor.  And he runs his fingers through her hair.

                When her name was brought up as a potential match, Charlotte heard the rumors.  And she did listen, for they are Borgias.  If Cesare Borgia is capable of killing his brother, what differences does it make if he should bed his sister?

                She asked him, on that sweaty wedding night, if he did love anyone.  If she was close.

                But there is no horror.  Only a strange, melancholy happiness for her husband, a worry over what this sister could whisper in his ear.  For surely she does want for her bastard.  What mother would not wish the Romagna, that eternal safety, perpetual danger for her son?

                When the dance ends, Lucrezia Borgia curtsies; Cesare Borgia bows.  And they leave the dancers hand in hand.

                “They barely bother to hide since she returned from Nepi,” a thick, drunken voice says in her ear.  It is her ambassador, his hand attempting comfort at her arm.  She delicately flinches him away.  “My apologies, my lady.  I did not wish for you to—“

                “Hush now.”  Her voice is too sharp; so she paints that sweet smile onto her face and says, “I do so love my husband.  And whatever Valentino does cannot be wrong?”

                And he believes her; her husband would not be so stupid.  With a pitying shake of his head, the ambassador vanishes into his mass of Italian ladies.

                The Borgia siblings are not far from what she imagined when she heard those rumors.  Razor-toothed and laughing, Lucrezia cradled at his side.  She stretches on her toes, beckons him close to whisper this and that.  But she is an angel, and so unlike Charlotte.

                _At least I am no easy replacement._ And he did not lie.

                There’s some lovely, beautiful even about the synchronicity of their movements, the way their eyes flick across the room.  They raise their glasses at the same time, gulp down red wine as if their very lives depend on its haze.  Nevertheless, they do not dull.

                And when her husband’s eyes alight upon her face, Charlotte dips low.

                She calls across the room, barely loud enough for him to hear, “Valentino.”

                He hesitates only a moment, his head cocked, mask hanging down.  Mars, lover of Venus.  Father of her Eros, as he would be father to the Ifans Romanus.  And then he grins, wraps his arm around his sister’s waist to murmur into her neck.

                Lucrezia Borgia does not smile so fast.  She hooks her arm about Cesare’s neck, brings him close a moment, her lips moving quickly.  Yet his smirk does not drop.  And he is reassuring her as a lover would, surely telling her that his French wife and her daughter are not great threats for the bastard boy.

                Charlotte likes her for this sharp-edged intelligence, the mother prioritizing her child.  And she thinks of Louise, tucked away in the ambassador’s apartments.  Surely he will smile upon his one legitimate offspring.

                They walk in perfect step; Lucrezia gliding, Valentino on the prowl.  She tempers the jaggedness of him with her own porcelain smoothness.  Her fingers, wearing a perfect pearl ring, catch at her cross.  And she crooks a finger at Charlotte, calls out:

                “I would see my sister!”

                And she is enveloped in Italian scents, in the voluptuousness of Lucrezia Borgia and her billowing skirts, her springing curls.  Her mouth smells sweetly like wine, feels wet against Charlotte’s cheek.  Her nails caress their way over her throat, search for the crucifix they will not find.  Charlotte is not such a great liar.

                “Wife.”  Cesare takes her hand, kisses it a moment before bringing her fully into the fold.  His mouth descends upon her forehead.  And in the presence of his true mistress, she is the sister.

                But there was always some of that in France, too.  The way he laughed, the gentleness there.  When they were not doing what they would and taking their pleasures, he treated her as her brother once did.  Playful, not insistent.            

                “Oh, but she is lovely!”  There’s something undeniably dangerous about Lucrezia Borgia’s eyes, like the beautiful poisons she’s said to spin.  She holds Charlotte’s face in her hands, thumbs rubbing across her cheekbones.  “And the child—the girl must be beautiful as well?”  And her lips curve, a great slice across her pearl visage.  “You would not come without my niece for his benefit.  My brother told me you valued honesty.”  A high-pitched laugh, piercing a hole in Charlotte’s belly.  “And it is remarkable that you got any at all from him.”

                It is.  Cesare Borgia’s lies have so quickly sprung across Europe; his promises of loyalty, that great dinner he held for traitors he would garrote.  Did he lie to Lucrezia?  Tell her that he would spare her sweet husband (who, perhaps, was not so sweet in his last days).

                She would not have been so foolish as to believe him—lest she loved him as greatly as they say.  But the greatest fool would have been Alfonso d’Aragona, for inciting Valentino’s rage.  For marrying Lucrezia Borgia at all.

                _I am not such a fool.  Valentino Lucrezia is not._

Finally, Charlotte may speak, her words tumbling over the widow’s brief silence.  “It is my heart’s delight to at last meet my beloved sister.”  Everlasting love: that thing they mockingly promised one another.  His had already been taken by Madonna Lucrezia; hers belongs to herself and that alone.  “And you, my lord.  I have missed you.”

                His lips twitch.  “I’m sure you have, my lady.”

XXX

                “She wishes the inheritance for her child.”

                “Of course she does.”

                “You promised it to Giovanni.  To _me_.”            

                “I did.”

                Cesare Borgia sits with his booted feet propped up on the table, his chair leaning back on its legs.  Having recently ordered a Vatican apartment arranged for his wife and child, he is carving an apple into pieces.  And he watches his sister’s every move, her dance around him, around the subject, around the riches that should belong to her and her son alone.

                “Not officially.”  Lucrezia’s voice drips with scorn, her bejeweled finger in the air.  “Nothing ties you to him, save an uncle’s affection—“

                He snatches her hand out of the air, pulls her forward and into his lap.  The chair comes down on all four legs, yet Lucrezia still tenses.  When he makes for her neck—that favorite place where he might feel her pulse—she swivels away, turns her head.

                “A brother’s affection.”  She does not deny the finger that traces a path between her breasts, but instead takes his hand and keeps it there.

                “If you truly loved me you would ensure my son’s future.”

                “ _If_ I truly love you?”  His laugh is harsh as the potion she sent down Alfonso’s throat, soothing him to death with its bitterness.  “Go to our brother’s grave, wherever that may be.  Your husbands’, hmm?  Both of them.”  And that free hand tugs at her braid.  “Go and ask them how much I love you.”

                There’s a moment’s hesitation, that brief satisfaction in her grin.  For as much as she has wept over Alfonso’s prone form, something within Lucrezia stirs at the hearts he will place before her feet.  Yet Charlotte d’Albret’s will not be one of them.  That much she can tell from the way he touched her cheek, asked after the child and humored her babbling information.

                “A love that fills me for the present,” she allows, her thumb brushing across his lower lip.  He nips her there, sending a chill down her spine, the promise of nights to come.  And oh, at least he shall not touch his wife.  Not as long as Lucrezia stands near.  “But what of the future?  Giovanni’s future?”  Her mouth draws near his, breath hot and tasting of sugar.  Her brother’s heart quickens beneath her hand, pupils dilating in excitement.  And oh, can his wife so quickly shake him?  “Mine?”

                And she lets him pull her close, her legs slipping open to straddle his hips.  His tongue is demanding—everything of him demands now, with the threat of her third marriage looming over their heads.  His hand, too, reaches between her legs, mouth smiling into hers at the hitch of her breath.     

                Even now, because he is all that the Vatican would hope for, he doesn’t bother to look towards the door before going for his codpiece.

                “Ah!”  Lucrezia reaches down, smacks his hand away—and places hers hard against his neck, where his blood rushes.  “None of that now.”  His gaze flashes sharp; but oh, he wouldn’t dare.  “Go to your wife.  Do what you must to send her home with no more than what she deserves as your wife.  Give the child what she should need.  And she is only a girl, so they will marry her off—“

                “Only a girl,” he laughs quietly, his hand roaming distractingly from her chest to her waist.  And she sighs, rolls her eyes, away from his.  “My sister.”

“Yes, your sister,” she snaps, sliding off of his lap.  He doesn’t bother to disguise disappointment, the exasperated sigh as she runs a hand down her wrinkled skirts.  “A Borgia.  Do not forget, brother.  I chose you above all others.  Is it not reasonable for me to ask the same of you?”

“I already have,” he insists, returning to his apple.  With far more frustration this time, she notes smugly.  He her black-hearted brother, and no other could distract him thus.  “I have chosen you, Lucrezia, time and time again.  Do you think that I would now desert you?  Am I so changeable?”

Her laugh is harsh, and a lesser man might flinch.  But he is used to Lucrezia’s fists, her nails dragging across his back like knives.  “You are the most changeable man in the world!”  Excepting that one goal: his kingdom.  She darts behind his chair, lays her hands on his shoulders.  They slide low, her teeth at his neck. “That is why you have all that you do.  Why you are so terrible to behold.”

So she flatters now, as she often does.  It’s an unfortunate weakness; but Lucrezia in her being is an unfortunate weakness, and one he would never be rid of.

“Nonetheless. You must decide, and must make that decision permanent.  Would you have your wife, retuning to France, and her smile?”  Her tongue is hot, her hands searching.  “Or would you have me—very, _very_ happy?”

After that, they don’t talk for a long while.

XXX

Charlotte’s Louise resembles her father further when she is in his arms.  And Valentino is not one for babies and their cries, however proud he may be that they exist.  They’re living proof of his vigor, and so Charlotte tells him so.     

“Do not play your games with me.”  He passes the babe off to her wet nurse, waving her into a corner.  The woman would not speak a word, lest she cares not for her head.  “You’re not my sister, Charlotte d’Albret.”  He takes her chin in his hand, chucks it as he would a child’s.  “I like you honest.”

“And yet I cannot expect the same of my husband, yes?”  The mere arch of her eyebrows sends him laughing; and oh, they did laugh together in France.  They may still.  “I expect only what any wife would expect.”

“What any wife would expect for her _son_.”   

“A gift I cannot give you on my own.”

There it is.  Louise was conceived on their wedding night; Charlotte has counted.  They could easily conceive a second child.  And surely that child would be a son, as God smiles now upon the man who would deny him.  But in the other room paces Lucrezia Borgia.  Cesare would not follow Charlotte to France.  And he would not attend to his wife.

Not because he so abhors bedding me while Lucrezia is near, Charlotte realizes.  But because he does not wish for that legitimate son.  Not while Giovanni, the Infans Romanus, lives.

Charlotte bids the wet nurse to stand outside the room, for some secrets are far too precious or lowly ears.  She draws her husband near, admires the whole of him.  Would that she did have a son as handsome as he.  But Giovanni may grow up to resemble his uncle.

                “Is that other rumor true?” She asks, an innocent in his Vatican.  “The ugly one concerning your sister’s child.”

                “And his paternity?”  And there is none of his charm; flat honesty, as he held when telling her that, yes, his professed love was a lie.  “No.  Giovanni is the son of a stable boy, long dead now.  But he is as much my flesh and blood as Louise.”

                For he is Lucrezia’s boy; and what is Lucrezia’s is as much Cesare’s.

                “You would deny our daughter her natural right for Lucrezia?”  There is no anger, no malice; just wonder.  For how does Lucrezia Borgia bring such a man to his knees?  Charlotte must ask.

                “Lucrezia is my own self.”  No sentiment there, simple fact.  When he cuts his own flesh Lucrezia will bleed. When she sobs his eyes shed their rare tears.  “And you know, Madame, that I deny myself nothing.”

                Charlotte laughs through her fingers, remembers the giggling girls on their wedding night.  “That is true, my lord.  But might you—“

                “Oh, my love.  She does wear your face well.”

                In the doorway stands Lucrezia Borgia, Louise cradled in her arms. She rubs the child’s cheek, places a kiss upon her downy head.  And they do call her the Vatican madonna for good reason; there could not be a more beautiful Virgin and child. 

                “I sent her wet nurse by.”  Charlotte cannot blame the girl for running.  “Your husband can attest that I am no stranger to a screaming child.”  Or much else, Charlotte suspects.  Yet she feels no worry with the child in Lucrezia Borgia’s arms.  She is only reminded of the girl Valentino met before his glory, the girl without a child to worry after.  Her shoulders, for the first time since Louise’s squalling birth, are light.  “Ah, she is beautiful.”

 Lucrezia takes that rightful place at her brother’s side.  Her mouth is pleasant, not so cruel, if a bit swollen.  And it’s remarkable how much Charlotte doesn’t mind this woman in her husband’s bed, their eyes red with last night’s exertions—and the terrible sin that comes with it.

For they are right and lithe and lovely together, and she should like only to stand with them and take what they would allow—along with, of course, what is owed her daughter. 

“I should like a daughter,” Lucrezia murmurs into the babe’s fat little palm.  “A girl at my skirts.”

“And so you should have one.”  Something sparks in Lucrezia’s eyes; the surprise, perhaps at finding the rare woman who does not despise her for being what she is.  “You should have all that you desire, sister.”

“As should you.”  The lie is instant, sweet venom that is nevertheless tempered by what seems like a genuine smile.  “But what should you desire most, Charlotte d’Albret?”

Charlotte’s gaze flickers to Cesare’s, and she is at once that young girl dancing.  “Everlasting love.  Preferably yours.”

He laughs; Lucrezia does not seem to mind the inside joke.  Yet still she shifts, almost imperceptibly.  She is not as convinced of his devotion as perhaps she should be—for she knows that it can result in terrible things.  He’s likely the same.  For that is their blood and its curse: they will never trust one another as they should.  They want too much.

Lucrezia passes the baby into Charlotte’s arms.  She circles around her brother and his wife, brings their little family together and into her clutches.  She looks upon them with a great smile, seems to be counting in her head, strategy bursting behind her lovely face.

Cesare looks at her with unabashed adoration, as if he’d like to consume her there and then.  Oh, it is lovely.

And she stands before Charlotte, takes the hand that is not full of baby.

“May you have it, then.”

XXX

“Tell me, Charlotte d’Albret.  Do they name us monsters in France?”

“Oh,” Charlotte says over her wine, observing the latest dance.  For there are so many great occasions in this Vatican.  “You are absolute beasts, both of you.  Yet the king considers your brother his friend.  Is he right to do so?”

And Lucrezia Borgia is honest.  “Is anyone right to trust my brother?”

Cesare, seated between them, booms out a laugh.  His fingers twine through Lucrezia’s, his lips allowing that affectionate brush against Charlotte’s hair.  But when he excuses himself—off to strike terror in the ambassador’s heart, to coil around him and squeeze away all that life—it is Lucrezia he bids goodbye.

Lucrezia takes to her brother’s great chair, sprawls out under his eye.  She smiles, bestows a kiss upon Charlotte’s cheek.  She dips her fingers in something sweet, licks it off her fingers.  The action is reminiscent of her brother, sucking away the savory bits and leaving nothing for the rest.

“So tell me.  Do you love him?”

Charlotte’s teeth scrape against her fork; a fork of gold, for the Borgias do love to smother strangers with their wealth.  “I adore my husband.  He tells me what I should like to hear; gives me what I want.  It is exactly what I wanted out of a marriage.”

“And yet you want more.”  When Cesare glances across the room, they sit at attention, his wife and his madonna.  “We are daughters, you and I.  We did not inherit our fathers’ lands to pass them off to our husbands—“

“Your brother gained his title through marriage to me.”

Lucrezia reaches across and touches Charlotte’s nose, a giggle escaping her red mouth.  “Through alliance with France.  I am not stupid, Charlotte d’Albret.”  You are him.  “Do you expect your daughter to take Cesare’s lands when he is gone?  To pass them off to a husband of no Borgia blood?  No.”  She shakes her head, those great earrings trembling.  “Not after all that he has done.”

“All that you both have done, Madonna.”  The word is foreign, and it tastes of the Borgias’ mingled breath.  “They do not lie when they say that yours is a most loving family.”  She presses her fingers against her lips to hide a smile; and Lucrezia’s sharp eyes do not miss that.

But she, too, beams wide.  “Ah, yes. Cesare loved our brother so much that he relieved him of his earthly terrors.  And he loves me so much”—she leans forward, her lips grazing Charlotte’s as she draws her near by the silk of her dress—“that he would give me heavenly delights.  Though I’m sure you remember those.”  There is nothing more beautiful than Lucrezia Borgia with her eyes wide and mouth open, her teeth shaped into points.  “And in return he wants only our souls, mmm?”

“Only yours, my lady,” Charlotte breathes, her eyes level with Lucrezia’s.  A heartbeat would close the gap between them; and it is not so unlike the days she spent with Cesare, is it?  “From me he wishes only honesty.”

Lucrezia’s lips are gentle and wet on hers; a sister’s lips, truly.  And when she withdraws, Lucrezia touches Charlotte’s cheek and slumps back into her chair, a leftover growl in her throat.  “If you adore Valentino, then you must adore Lucrezia.  That is the way the game is played.  And I do so like you, little sister.  It would be so much easier if you did not grasp for that precious child of yours.”

“But I did marry your brother.”  Charlotte does not know how anyone cannot stare at them, their dark and light.  Is it not perfect, this pair carving out the world they would want?  “And so I must grasp.”

Lucrezia takes Charlotte’s hand in hers, twines their fingers together as she would with Cesare.  “I would have us be better friends than that, Madame.  And so you must dance with us.”

They are one person divided, circling one another like the great cats Lucrezia is said to keep.  When their palms touch, Cesare looks at his sister like he might run her ragged.  She lowers her eyes, demure but for that smirk she wears in place of a snarl.

And Charlotte is happy to be let into their game, to smile when they smile, to laugh when they laugh.

“Ask her,” Cesare tells Lucrezia, as if his wife is their little pet to hold and toy with.  “Ask her what she wants of this union.”

                When Lucrezia does ask, a coil of Charlotte’s hair around her finger, the duchess of Valentinois answers, “I should want a child, a great and lovely husband.  Everlasting love, of course.”

                “Oh, my sweet.”  As she draws near, Lucrezia winks.  And she brushes a clawed hand over her brother’s face.  “If you cannot have his, then surely mine shall suffice.”

XXX

                It is wonderful, these sun-filled days in Rome.  She is good for them; good in that few wonder over Valentino taking his sister to bed when his wife vows that he has spent each night with her.  And so he has—just not without Lucrezia.

                Lucrezia.  The widowed duchess is not so alone now, even when her brother is closed off in his great rooms with great men.  For she might whisper to Charlotte, tell stories of when Cesare wore his cardinal’s red and Juan the Borgia armor.

                These tales always seem to end on a scornful note, with an unhappy ending to be found for every Borgia enemy.  Or worse yet, these creatures are faceless strangers, fading so far into the back of Lucrezia’s mind that she can only call them things like, _my stableboy_ or _that nun Cesare chased._

_Please, God.  Let them remember me._

“Do you not love me?” She asks Lucrezia one day in the Vatican gardens. 

                “With a love everlasting,” Lucrezia—the lady of fleeting affections—assures her.  She rests her head upon Charlotte’s shoulder, as she so often does to her brother during their nights.  But for all her sweetness, Charlotte knows that enough time has passed, enough encounters, and she still has yet to conceive.

                If she was in France, they would say that Lucrezia was using her concoctions to keep Charlotte barren.  And perhaps she is; it’s only clever.  But there is no point to asking, no point to upsetting their idyll.  “Yet you do not want your niece provided for?”

                She holds no malice, for Lucrezia is Lucrezia, and Lucrezia has her reasons. 

                “Oh, I want Louise provided for.”  Lucrezia pats her hand, ring glinting in the sun.  “Yet the Romagna does not provide for her.  It shall make your daughter a target. A creature like me—bartered from man to man until there’s nothing left but…”  Her mouth tightens.  “What’s left.”

                “So you shall condemn your son to that fate?”  Charlotte thinks of the little boy Lucrezia is said to have killed for, toddling with his fists in his mouth.

                “Giovanni is a boy.  And he will be a man.”  Lucrezia’s coolness is betrayed by the look to her, the clear knowledge she must have after watching several Borgia sons grow to maturity.  “He’s a Borgia, and if Cesare’s word is law—which it is—he will have him become a warrior.  A great duke.  And if he is anything like his uncle, Giovanni will be magnificent and everyone shall remember his name.”  She comes to stand before Charlotte, rests their foreheads together in a sort of prayer.  “But he will be like me, too.  For every one of Cesare’s glories I lose more of myself to him.  It is good that you are only his wife.  And it is good that Louise will be raised in France.”  There’s something harsh and shattered about Lucrezia now; and within her Charlotte sees her brother’s eyes, always possessive.  “My brother does not love you as I do.”

                That night of whispers beneath their sheets.  The love he held close.  “I doubt that your brother could love anyone as he does you.  But I need not say that, do I?”

                “There are rivers of blood to attest to how greatly he loves me.”  When he is gone, she is lighter, easier, less lascivious and jealous.  Yet she always looks for him, as he does for her.  “I need not say that you are better off without that love.”  She kisses Charlotte’s cheek one last time before parting, once again walking on air.  “Leave Louise’s safety to me.  She shall not have the Romagna, no.  But she shall have what I can give her—all my protection, a lifelong allowance of what Cesare will leave me and mine.”  Her arm through Charlotte’s, warm and light.  “Do you not trust me?”

                “Do I have a choice?”  Cesare approaches them in the garden, a shadow amongst all this flourishing life.

                “I’ve discovered that life is much simpler once choice is taken away.”  And Lucrezia drops Charlotte entirely, rushes into her brother’s arms.  Her mouth is open to his, her eyes dark and hungry.  And it would be lovely and terrible to watch them like this for all eternity.

XXX

                At his life’s end, it need not matter who inherits what, for the Romagna is not Cesare Borgia’s to give.  In France, then, Charlotte does weep.  But the curious thing is that she weeps less for her husband and broken body—and more for Lucrezia Borgia’s torn soul, her half-eaten spirit.

                Lucrezia locks herself in that room and says his name.  So Charlotte wears the widow’s black for her.


End file.
